Throughout the
present century, the news from the Middle East has become steadily
more chaotic and violent. Not long ago, states like Iraq and Syria
were feared for their expansionism and their vicious internal
repression, but at least they maintained some order within their
territories. Those nations have now been shattered, in the face of
rival nationalisms, the ideologies of religious sects, and of
countless private armies and militias. Throughout, these conflicts
have been manipulated by outside Great Powers. For an ancient
historian, this whole process evokes a powerful sense of déjà vu,
as it recalls events that were not just very similar, but which
occurred in almost exactly the same geographical region. Some of the
elements in that ancient story seem eerily similar, and so, perhaps,
are some of the policy lessons.

In 200 BCE, this
region formed part of a mighty empire that spanned the world from
Greece deep into India and Afghanistan. This realm took its name from
Seleucus, one of the generals of Alexander the Great, and it
reproduced the triumphs of that original conqueror. The imperial
capital was at the city of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, some twenty miles from
the center of modern Baghdad. At its height, this was among the most
populous cities on the planet, a worthy capital for a world-emperor.
Seleucid power in India allowed the empire to import war-elephants,
which in their time were the cutting-edge weapon that made its
military so fearsome. The empire left a rich cultural inheritance,
chiefly in scientific fields, as it encouraged the
cross-fertilization of Greek and Babylonian thought.

The empire
reached new heights under Antiochus III, the Great (222-187). But
like the modern-day tyrant Saddam Hussein, Antiochus made the deadly
mistake of challenging another world power, in that case, the Roman
Empire, which was developing radical new military tactics and
weaponry. The Romans crushed Antiochus militarily in 190 BCE, at the
epochal battle of Magnesia. The Romans could not feasibly hope to
occupy the whole Seleucid realm, but they could demand eye-watering
financial reparations, and moreover insist that Antiochus observed
strict arms control: the elephants had to be lamed, under outside
supervision. Whatever they might do, the Seleucids always knew that
the Romans were watching, and seeking new opportunities to invade.

The Seleucids
were both humiliated, and ruined financially, driving them to ever
more risky and desperate military adventures. That began an era of
crisis and fragmentation, as nations, ethnic groups and religions
long suppressed by the Seleucids bid for independence. First to go
were border kingdoms uneasily attached to the larger empire, but the
rot soon spread to what had been heartland territories. Some of these
successor states – like Armenia and Pontus – enjoyed real power,
and briefly became empires in their own right. By far the greatest
beneficiary of the Seleucid collapse was the Parthian kingdom, in
modern Iran. In 141 BCE, the Parthians seized the Seleucid capital,
confining the later kings of the dynasty to what we would today call
Syria.

Constant
pressure from outside powers - Rome, Parthia, Egypt, and Pergamon -
ensured that the Seleucids could never find an opportunity to pause
and rebuild. Apart from direct invasion, those external enemies
regularly supported factions and kingdoms within the Seleucid realm,
fuelling unrest and secession.

Beyond the
simple lust for power, the various contenders had an enormous
economic motive to seize and divide Seleucid lands. By uniting the
Mediterranean world with Central Asia, the Greek conquerors had
powerfully developed the trade of the Silk Road, the conduit not just
for textiles but for the hugely profitable traffic in spices. Then as
now, greed for priceless raw materials drove political aggression and
interference.

But some of the
region’s players had other non-material motives for resisting the
Seleucids. In the region of Palestine, powerful Jewish factions
developed religious-nationalist ideas, which in the 160s provoked
open revolt against Antiochus IV, son and heir of Antiochus the
Great. As the struggle expanded, and the wars degenerated into still
greater bloodshed, revolutionary ideas became increasingly
apocalyptic and messianic in tone. The great literary monument to
this crisis is the central portion of the Biblical Book of Daniel,
written in 165 BCE, which later generations have constantly mined as
the foundation text for apocalyptic thought. Later Christian concepts
of the Antichrist or of diabolical rulers adopted Daniel’s vision,
with its vicious portrait of a thinly disguised Antiochus IV
destroyed and humbled by a messianic leader. By the 130s a restored
Jewish kingdom joined the roll-call of new states erected on the
ruins of the Seleucid world.

Seleucid power
contracted steadily until by the end of the second century BCE,
little was left. The patchwork map of the successor statelets and
petty kingdoms looks remarkably like a political picture of
modern-day post-Ba’thist Syria and Iraq. By the 80s BCE, a grandly
named ruler like Antiochus XII Dionysus exercised little power beyond
Damascus and its immediate environs. After some years of success,
most of the new post-Seleucid states and empires crumbled in their
turn, leaving only two real victors, namely the great world empires
of the West and the East – of Rome, and Persia. In the 60s BCE, the
Roman general Pompey was at war with Armenia and Parthia, and almost
as an afterthought, he annexed the pathetic remnants of the Seleucid
empire into what became a new Roman province of Syria. Meanwhile,
Seleucia-Ctesiphon remained the capital of Parthia and of later
Persian empires for a thousand years, until it was in turn replaced
by Baghdad.

In terms of its
lasting influence, the empire had more impact in its dissolution than
in its heyday. Ultimately, the patchwork map of small states was
likely to be temporary, lasting only until one big fish chose to
swallow its small neighbors, and in retrospect, we know that the
victor would be Persia. Given Iranian influence across the region
today, that precedent inevitably sounds disturbing.

Yet that new
imperial structure could not entirely eliminate the millenarian and
apocalyptic hopes and fears that had been stirred in the years of
chaos, and which have exercised so potent an influence on Jews and
Christians, and an influence for good. In the desperate conditions of
the modern Middle East, apocalyptic ideas have driven radical
Islamist activism, including that of the Islamic State. We can only
hope that, as the Caliphate is crushed, those religious ideas do not
spread and metastasize further afield.